Four Men Arrested in Ukraine for Running Fake Crypto Exchanges

Ukrainian police arrested a group of four men suspected of running six fake cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to reports, four men between 20 and 26 were deceiving users by fake promotional ads and positive reviews to lures users in buying their fake crypto while stealing from them. The police reportedly said that these men have “special knowledge and skills in the field of programming” and “have created their own CMS-system for managing the content of exchange sites.”

During the raid of the suspects’ homes, the police reportedly seized computers, flash drives, smartphones, and other devices. According to a spokesperson for the Ukrainian National Police, “the list of sites is not complete.” Now authorities are asking users to provide information about whether they were deceived by fraudulent exchanges before.

Yesterday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission received an additional emergency court order to freeze the assets of Dominic Lacroix, owner of PlexCorps. Lacroix and his partner, Sabrina Paradis-Royer, were accused of violating securities law in respect to the PlexCoin initial coin offering (ICO) conducted by PlexCorps in August last year. The ICO reportedly raised $15 million from “thousands of investors.”